On The Tundra Tonight

Several years ago, cruisin’ the channels for something interesting to watch on TV, Marie and I stumbled upon a Discovery Channel special about the raising of a Woolly Mammoth carcass in Siberia. The Woolly Mammoth was a great huge mammal, related to the elephant, basically a woolly elephant, which roamed the earth up until approximately 20,000 years ago, when it became extinct. Apparently, it has been known for some time that there are, likely, many more Woolly Mammoths to be found buried in the ice in Siberia, since tusks and other evidence have been found on the surface during some warmer years.

The special basically takes it's audience from the moment of discovery of tusks protruding through the surface, to the digging of the huge hole around the animal for removal. Along the way we see small thawings of bits and pieces around the carcass, ( like 20,000 year old wool! ) using hair dryers and other makeshift equipment, and the eventual flying out of one huge block of frozen earth, with a Woolly Mammoth inside, by helicopter, to another safe and frozen lab site.

This stuff fascinates me no end. All the scientific ramifications, like will they find an entire Woolly Mammoth, inside the ice, frozen for 20,000 years, and still perfect? Yikes! And will they be able to get usable DNA from it, and impregnate a present day elephant, and get “The New Woolly Mammoth”, to roam the plains outside Duluth?And will there be tours offered to the sub zero underground cave “lab site” where they are doing this science, and can I get a ticket?

So when a little melody and chorus came down, I just had to write the song, which I eventually sent off to The Discovery Channel, for their approval, with the hope that they would play it at The Discovery Channel Woolly Mammoth yearly banquet, or something. They were kind enough to acknowledge my efforts, and even sent along a denim Discovery Channel shirt and hat, which I sometimes still proudly don.

I like this song. I recorded it when I was still using a little Tascam 8 track cassette recorder. But I like the song so much I have decided to include it, (after some much needed mastering) on one of the two CDs I will release in the Fall of 2005. To hear a clip of the song, click here